College Football Playoff Standings 2015: Week 5 Rankings, Bowl Game Projections

As hard as it is to believe, some teams across the country are already a third of the way home with their regular seasons.

There's still plenty—and we mean plenty—of college football to soak in over the rest of the year, but entering Week 5, the early part of the season has provided us with an opportunity to understand just how good some teams are and how bad others have become.

Thanks in part to several Week 4 games that helped separate some contenders from pretenders in several conferences, Bleacher Report's College Football Playoff and postseason bowl projections have returned and are ready to look ahead.

As with any prognostication on the postseason picture this early in the year, these projections are heavy on predicting a ton of coin-flip games, so keep that in mind before screaming to the high heavens.

Also note that the bowl picture is fluid because conferences can send teams that finish higher in the standings to bowls that might be considered lower in the pecking order.

With that in mind, here are a few takeaways heading into Week 5 of the season:

• Here are the full AP Top 25 rankings. The College Football Playoff selection committee will release its first rankings November 3 at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
• The College Football Playoff anticipates plenty of changes over the coming weeks, but it should come as no surprise that Ohio State is slated to be the top-ranked team when it reaches the postseason. The closer proximity to Dallas puts the Buckeyes in the Cotton Bowl semifinal against predicted Pac-12 champion UCLA.
• Already holding a road win over Alabama plus a favorable schedule (Texas A&M and LSU in Oxford), Ole Miss is in prime position to win the SEC. This slots the Rebels in as the second-ranked team in the playoff standings—a spot they can capture even with a loss. Given how weak Baylor's schedule could be at the end of the year, the Bears would be slated in the No. 3 spot regardless of whether they run the table over the rest of the year. Things would shift if Baylor were to lose a game, but for now, that's not looking as likely as it was earlier in the year.
• Memphis may be the leader in the clubhouse to capture the "Group of Five" bowl bid right now, but there's plenty of competition in its own conference. Because of the Tigers' iffy defense (see Cincinnati last Thursday with a backup quarterback), Houston gets the nod with a win over an ACC opponent (Louisville) already in the bag, a potential win over an SEC team (Vanderbilt) on the horizon and what could be two victories over Memphis. Thanks in part to the weakness of the Mountain West Conference, Boise State is on the outside looking in unless there's a lot of drama among the other Group of Five leagues.
• Thanks in part to a high number of teams being selected for the "New Year's Six" bowls (in this scenario, Texas A&M as West Division runner-up and Georgia as East champion but SEC title game loser), there's some shuffling when it comes to the SEC bowl picture. Combined with the fact that some teams like Auburn and Arkansas will struggle to qualify for a bowl at all, a few bowls may be looking to select replacement teams from elsewhere.
• Some juicy matchups could be in the cards, including powerhouses Alabama and Michigan in the Citrus Bowl, Tennessee and Florida State in the TaxSlayer Bowl and USC against Oklahoma in the Alamo Bowl.

Here's a look at the full postseason picture:

BleacherReport

You can follow Bryan Fischer on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.